


Make Your Own

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:02:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8741674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: Merentha13 said "How about the lads on a surveillance Christmas eve sharing stories of their favorite, or not so favorite, Christmas past." Cowley seems to have snuck in too...





	

“Fancy another cuppa?” Doyle asked morosely, standing up and padding over to their tiny gas cooker, shaking the kettle and apparently deciding there was water enough, whatever Bodie chose.

“Any more and I’ll float out of here with the next…”

There was a sudden deluge of water from the ceiling nearest the corner guttering, most of it running down the wall, but some of it splashing outwards, drip-dripping into the pool that had been steadily growing in a dip of the lino.

“…leak in the roof,” Bodie finished, and couldn’t help half-laughing, even though he knew there wasn’t much to laugh about. But Doyle had turned to look at him, a smile stretching across his own tired face, and that would do for now. “D’you reckon we can convince Cowley to up our danger pay for this one?”

“Och Bodie,” Doyle began thickly, fiddling with cups and teabags and milk. “I’m nae made o’ money, ye’ll just have to provide yer own brolly…”

“Aye, not a bad idea, Doyle.”

“Sir…” Doyle looked up sharply, recovered quickly. “Cup of tea, sir?”

Cowley looked distastefully at the chipped mugs and dusty teabags, didn’t deign to reply. Instead he stepped over to the bay window, leaned down to peer through their binoculars, into the night and the house opposite. 

“Out at the pub, sir,” Bodie explained, “2.9 and 6.1 are on them.”

“I should hope so.” Cowley glanced around the room again. “Although I’m inclined to think that we may have missed the boat on this one – it may be that Chalmers and his friends have already made the exchange.”

“Then why are we…” Doyle began, and Bodie cut him off before he could get them both into trouble.

“Does that mean we can finish up here, sir?”

“Aye,” Cowley nodded, watched for a moment as his agents brightened, started looking around, no doubt for their bags. “Tomorrow morning it’ll be over one way or another.”

“Tomorrow….”

“But sir, it’s Christmas eve!”

“I’m well aware of that Bodie - and I’ve not had time to hang my own stocking yet.” He allowed himself a small smile when Bodie looked chastened, at Doyle rebellious in the corner. Hard to look truly rebellious, though, when you’re clutching a mug of tea in either hand – and one of them has a well-worn picture of Snoopy on the side. He tipped his head towards the inside wall of the room. “Well, at least you’ve got a chimney for the man to visit.”

Bodie breathed in long-sufferingly, nostrils flaring, and Cowley’s smile widened. They’d be alright, these two. “Don’t forget I know exactly when the clock ticks into time-and-a-half on this job - you’d not have volunteered without it now, would you?”

“No sir,” Bodie muttered, taking his tea from Doyle. “D’you want our reports first thing, then?”

“Aye,” Cowley said again, and let the moment stretch. “First thing on the 27th, and don’t be late with them.” He swept a final glance around the room, at their binoculars and camera, and sketchily-filled notebook. “You’ll be in touch if anything unusual does turn up.”

“Sir…” Bodie began, but their boss was already gone, vanished down the stairs as quietly as he had come.

“Time and a half,” Doyle began, “As if time and…”

“Ah, knock it off – it could be worse, you know.”

“Worse?” Doyle threw his free arm in an arc that encompassed the leaking roof, the grimy hob, the electric kettle with its loose wire, and the camp bed in the corner with just two army blankets and a loose strut at one end. “How could this be worse?”

“Could be in Africa…” Bodie began, parking himself in the most comfortable chair, the one they’d pulled close to the window so that they could watch out without being bent to the binoculars the whole time.

“Africa…”

“Bloody hot in Africa around Christmas time, you know. You try cooking a turkey dinner when it’s over a hundred degrees!”

“You couldn’t cook a turkey if…”

“Had to catch it first too,” Bodie added reminiscently. “They’re noisy buggers when no one’s supposed to know you’re around, all gobble-gobble-gobble…”

Doyle laughed then, for the first time in what seemed like days, filling the room with it so that Bodie’s own grin widened.

“It was a scrawny thing when we caught it too – and then Tyson didn’t bloody cook it properly, and half the squad came down with salmonella the next day…”

“You’re making that up,” Doyle accused, though he hadn’t stopped smiling himself, his face bright with it, eyes alive again.

“I swear,” Bodie said, “On my mother’s grave.”

Doyle eyed him suspiciously. “Those sods back from the pub yet?”

“Nah, ‘nother half hour until last orders. Go on then, what was your worst Christmas?”

“My worst…” Doyle sobered, and Bodie could have kicked himself. He was hardly going to have a hilarious tale from down the drug squad, was he, or from the gloom that had been Derby or where ever he’d grown up. “Nineteen fifty eight,” he said though, straight off, so that Bodie rushed to work it out in his head. “I was going on ten years old, and I was desperate for a bike like me mate next door had. His dad’d just got a new job down the local factory, manager he was, and Billy had a brand new Raleigh – bright red it was, beautiful. Anyway, I knew I wouldn’t get it, but I still hoped, like you do.” He looked up at Bodie then, and Bodie nodded, remembering his own childish dreams.

“What happened?” he asked, wanting to lighten the mood a little, “Have to build your own out of Mechano?”

“Pair of socks and three new hankies,” Doyle said sombrely, so that Bodie looked up and caught his eye, and then they were both laughing, until his eyes were blurred with tears, and Doyle was clutching his stomach.

“Ah, this isn’t so bad, then,” Bodie said at last, “Go on, admit it…”

Doyle wandered over, swallowing the last of his tea, and put the mug down on the decrepit bookcase behind the armchair, leaned across Bodie to look out the window. For just a moment they shared warmth, then Doyle stood up straight again, wandered back towards the cooker. 

“Not so bad at all,” he said, voice husky. “Fancy another cuppa?”

 

_December 2011_


End file.
